'The Shelter Cycle,' by Peter Rock

The Shelter Cycle

By Peter Rock

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 214 pages; $23)

On March 15, 1990, thousands followed Elizabeth Clare Prophet into vast underground shelters in Montana, believing that a Soviet missile attack was about to destroy the world. It didn't, the believers emerged and some even continue believing to this day.

In "The Shelter Cycle," Peter Rock, who lived on a nearby ranch at the time and has interviewed current and former church members, transforms this bizarrely anticlimactic incident into a riveting, suspenseful novel. Twenty years later, Francine, brought up in "The Activity," has been building a new life with her kind husband, Wells, and a baby to come, when her childhood friend Colville appears, claiming he's been called to her.

Those who have left the group and those who feel a pull back toward it circle each other warily. Deftly switching perspectives among his three main characters with each new chapter, Rock brings the landscape and story to life with remarkable sympathy. The "Light" that Activity believers seek is a palpable exterior force. The 50-foot-deep "earth donut" shelter is made human size by the details inside it: Magic Marker signs on the wall, children's drawings and stores of "dried rice cake, a handful of tiny, silver dried fish, then the round chips of bananas that tasted like dust."

Francine's dilemma is one that many of us can identify with, between inheritance and independence. As she writes to her unborn baby: "We had so many rules to guide us, our parents did, and now I wonder how I will raise you, what beliefs I have to pass down."

Rock's style is as direct as a Montana rancher, which can sometimes make it difficult to distinguish real characters from apparitions and manifestations. Nonetheless, "The Shelter Cycle" achieves a unique harmony between otherworldly beliefs and earthly realities.